Thursday, October 25, 2007
Beauchamp; On Choosing the Lesser of Multiple Evils
With Drudge's big scoop (Drudge link gone, but here's a good round-up) the blogoverse has once again acquired a taste for French cuisine, or at the very least chewing on a fellow with a French surname. Michael Yon, who passed on the first course, takes a nibble this time with his characteristic grace, wit and consideration. For some, though, the calls for forgiveness and a second chance ring hollow without the catharsis of an open confession, a penance required not even by that benchmark of stricture, the Catholic Church. For me, though, the absence of public flagellation is entirely understandable once you consider the often unspoken of player in this drama, his wife.
I do not know the man, and so I will ignore all the bad conjecture that passed for commentary during the first go around and assume he married his wife for many of the same reasons I married mine, chief among these being love. Assuming this, there is no question that having lied to his command, his wife's employer and, possibly, his wife, Pvt. Beauchamp was left with the conundrum of what course he could take to cause the least least damage to both himself and his wife in the future. By being honest with the Army and standing by his 'toon mates he is trying to do right by them and himself. By keeping mum and not throwing her or her employer under the bus he is trying to do right by the woman he loves. It's really no more of a mystery than that.
That his stories were fabrications is as well recognized as the fact that Dan Rather's TANG documents were fake, but that will not keep some from steadfastly persisting in a belief of both. A public confession will no more change their minds than Mary Mapes could have been dissuaded from publishing that embarrassment of a book she wrote. Denial is both cheap and easy. I neither need Beauchamp to prostrate himself upon the alter of truth nor do I need to know how many times my neighbor coveted my ass. I am perfectly content to let both be between the sinner and their personal confessor.
I do not know the man, and so I will ignore all the bad conjecture that passed for commentary during the first go around and assume he married his wife for many of the same reasons I married mine, chief among these being love. Assuming this, there is no question that having lied to his command, his wife's employer and, possibly, his wife, Pvt. Beauchamp was left with the conundrum of what course he could take to cause the least least damage to both himself and his wife in the future. By being honest with the Army and standing by his 'toon mates he is trying to do right by them and himself. By keeping mum and not throwing her or her employer under the bus he is trying to do right by the woman he loves. It's really no more of a mystery than that.
That his stories were fabrications is as well recognized as the fact that Dan Rather's TANG documents were fake, but that will not keep some from steadfastly persisting in a belief of both. A public confession will no more change their minds than Mary Mapes could have been dissuaded from publishing that embarrassment of a book she wrote. Denial is both cheap and easy. I neither need Beauchamp to prostrate himself upon the alter of truth nor do I need to know how many times my neighbor coveted my ass. I am perfectly content to let both be between the sinner and their personal confessor.
